On Tuesday the International Astronomical Union announced names for two of these moons, the fourth and fifth to be discovered. Moon No. 4 is now Kerberos, after the many-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld in Greek mythology. Moon No. 5 is Styx, named for the river that souls had to cross over to get to Hades, or the underworld, and the goddess who ruled over it.

…Dr. Showalter, however, said he thought it would be more fun to throw it open to the public, and held an Internet contest in which people could vote for names for the moons. He was impressed, he said in an e-mail, by the amount of thinking and creativity that went into the suggestions.

“There were a lot of weird names,” he wrote. “A few suggested ‘Potato and Potahto,’ which I thought was pretty funny. Lots of children wrote in to suggest their siblings as ‘minions of Hades.’ ”

The favorite name turned out to be Vulcan, which is both the Greek god of fire and, perhaps more significantly, the home planet of Mr. Spock, the “Star Trek” character played by Leonard Nimoy. Dr. Showalter submitted the names Vulcan and Cerberus — which was later changed to the Greek spelling Kerberos to avoid confusion with an asteroid — to the Working Group for Planetary Nomenclature and the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature of International Astronomical Union.

If it’s useful for astronomers to be able to pull from variant spellings, I suggest that more astronomical be given names in Mandarin. That way we can choose from names in normal characters, pinyin, sin wenz, gwoyeu romatzyh, and other Romanizations that wikipedia didn’t see fit to mention.

Or we could use Russian diminutives: Alexei, Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, Lyoshenka, and many more for all I know. (That would be enough to rename the planets in our solar system. I wouldn’t mind living on Alyoshka).

“You’re holding the 19th century by way of something that was produced in the 21st century,” said Mr. Galese, who finds in these objects a tangible link to the past. He’s also made a chopstick holder from the 1960s and a portable chess set from the 1940s…

After working as an attorney in patent litigation cases, Mr. Galese said he wishes more people saw the patent archives as a rich repository, flush with freely available designs. He sometimes refers to the patent office’s archives as the “original Thingiverse,” comparing it to the rapidly growing online library of design files shared by 3-D printing hobbyists today.

The Nazis called them “Night Witches” because the whooshing noise their plywood and canvas airplanes made reminded the Germans of the sound of a witch’s broomstick.

The Russian women who piloted those planes, onetime crop dusters, took it as a compliment. In 30,000 missions over four years, they dumped 23,000 tons of bombs on the German invaders, ultimately helping to chase them back to Berlin. Any German pilot who downed a “witch” was awarded an Iron Cross.

These young heroines, all volunteers and most in their teens and early 20s, became legends ofWorld War II but are now largely forgotten. Flying only in the dark, they had no parachutes, guns, radios or radar, only maps and compasses. If hit by tracer bullets, their planes would burn like sheets of paper.

Their uniforms were hand-me-downs from male pilots. Their faces froze in the open cockpits. Each night, the 40 or so two-woman crews flew 8 or more missions — sometimes as many as 18…

Leah Anthony Libresco graduated from Yale in 2011. She works as a statistician for a school in Washington D.C. by day, and by night writes for Patheos about theology, philosophy, and math at www.patheos.com/blogs/unequallyyoked. She was received into the Catholic Church in November 2012."

grok87

#6. I loved the story of Nadezdha Popova. Makes me think of Serafina Pekkala from Pullmans “His Dark Materials” series:

Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

LeahLibresco

I’m so pleased you thought of Serafina!

grok87

Such a fascinating character and series. If you haven’t read them yet “Lyra’s Oxford” and “Once Upon a Time in the North” are good reads too.